Recently I've been thinking a lot about one of my favorite art quotes:

"Art is coming face to face with yourself." -Jackson Pollock

These words are so incredibly accurate and I do believe that every time we paint, draw or get into any type of creative process we are bound to confront ourselves, our feelings, desires and fears, hopes and insecurities etc. I believe that all art we create is always primarily about ourselves and never really about other people. Even when we say our work is about others or when we're creating for an audience and even if we want that audience to interact with our art I think that our work is always basically about us. Even when we claim to create work that, let's say, criticizes modern society or aims to fight for some cause, is it really society that we are confronting in our art, or are we actually facing our own expectations of how society should function? Do we really need others to interact with our art or are we just looking for external validation of our ideas? Does feedback we get from others truly matters so much or is it our own reaction to that feedback that we need to face (what if people hate your work, will you still keep on creating or will you quit, if you get lukewarm response will you continue to believe in your vision or will you start doubting yourself, if everyone loves what you do will you change as a person and will you start treating others differently...)? I'm not saying that it's impossible or dishonest to create with other people in mind or that our work can't serve anyone else but us, it definitely can. But I believe that essentially creative process is always an inward journey in which we are confronted with ourselves no matter what the end result of our work might be (a reaction to social injustice, exploration of philosophical ideas, entertainment or something else...). Creative process always mirrors our own inner world, our struggles, our believes, our wishes... or as Jackson Pollock said it so elegantly:

"Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is." -Jackson Pollock